The water gushes out, tepid and unpleasant to the taste--but
health-giving, they say, like so many unpleasant things--from under steep
banks of clay through which the railway to Sfax has been cut. It is a
sleepy hollow of palms, a place to dream away one's cares. The picturesque
but old-fashioned well at this spot has just been replaced by a modern
trough of cement. I watched the work from beginning to end, ten or fifteen
Arabs, supervised by a burly Sicilian mason, finishing the job in a few
days.
"These Saracens!"--such was the overseer's constant lament--"these
Saracens! You don't know, dear sir, what fools they are."
In never-ending procession of gaudy rags the village folk come to these
waters, the boys mostly on horseback, the women afoot. Donkeys are loaded
with the heavy black goat-skins of water; there is laundry-work going on,
and a good deal of straightforward love-making under the shade. These
children of nature have a wild beauty of their own, and the young girls
are frolicsome as gazelles and far less timid. They have none of the
pseudo-bashfulness of the townsfolk.
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